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Dumping on Manny

Cleveland Indian fans have an answer for their anemic performing team. They want the players to do a Manny Ramirez and clog their veins with roids. Maybe that might be good for a couple of extra shots toward the parking lot every game. The killing thing about this is the fans who demanded the Manny roids weren’t horsing around. If cheating can win a few more games why the heck not, after all, so the thinking goes some of the games heaviest hitters on some of the game’s winningest teams have loaded up on the stuff in the past, present, and probably in the future too. And may still get away with it again.
This was glaringly and embarrassingly clear in 2007 when the long awaited and much ballyhooed Mitchell Report hit the news. The report drove home a few disturbing truths about the game and much of sport.

The first was that dozens of players with the wink and nod connivance of the MLB and union top cats, trainers, medical personnel, drug companies, and even federal watchdog agencies winked and nodded as some of baseballs biggest names doped themselves into prodigious feats on the diamond
Another more disturbing truth is that the dump for the deliberate blind eye to drug abuse crashed down on the head of one man, Barry Bonds. Bonds was not indicted by a federal grand jury for steroid use, the charge was lying to a grand jury, the real reason he may eventually wind up in the docket is that he was the most visible, high profile, and thus convenient scapegoat to take the blame for baseball’s revel in its steroid filled home run bleacher shots that sent attendance records soaring and jingled cash registers. Roger Clemons is also on the roid hot seat but so far he’s been able to duck, dodge,deflect and keep the legal heat off him.

Baseball didn’t say zilch about banning the use of steroids before 2002. It had absolutely zero testing procedures that mandated penalties for those caught cheating until 2004. It did not scrub the use of the performance drug HGH until 2005. Even then, punishments were spotty, and capricious. That is until the feds began to take a harder look at the use of the junk in the sport, and Bonds began to inch closer to MLB icons Babe Ruth’s former home run record and later Hank Aaron’s home run record.

One other bitter truth is that no matter how many roid abusers were and are named and no matter how many pious squawks are heard about sullying the game and no matter how many recommendations to purge the offenders from the game are made, other than Bonds no other MLB baseball player has yet or even likely will wind up in a court docket for illicit use of steroids. Despite the hoopla, teeth gnashing, phony self-righteous indignation, and clamor to do something about the shame and disgrace of drug use in the majors, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the MLB officials or owners will follow to the strict letter the reform proposals made. Handslap suspensions, reprimands, fines, and a spate of bad publicity will be the order of the day in the game for the Mannys and Alexs.

Here’s the prediction. Manny grabbed the headlines for a day. It set the chops of talking head sports commentators, sports writers, and baseball buffs in motion. It sparked another round of angry calls from some public officials to crack down on drug use in the majors. It drew solemn pledges from MLB officials to do whatever it takes to end the cheating. And just as quickly the Manny flap will blow over.

Meanwhile Bonds who’s out of baseball and has absolutely no market value to the sport will still stand as the favorite punching bag for the owners, the fans, and sportswriters. He’ll be the fount of evil for everything wrong with the game. A Bonds conviction will be even better. This will give MLB officials the perfect chance to distance themselves from the cheaters, or more accurately, the perceived grand symbol of drug cheating, Bonds.
Manny won’t have to worry about any of that. He’ll be back in the Dodger’s line-up in July and Mannywood will be built higher than ever. And Indian fans will scream even louder, Bring on the roids!

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

Mark McGwire smacked 70 homers in 1998, breaking the single-season record then held by Roger Maris. Everyone knew McGwire was then juiced on androstenedione, a performance-enhancing drug that baseball had not banned and in fact was then available over-the-counter. Major League Baseball looked the other way and made millions off McGwire’s exploits in the process. Same with Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and scores of other big-time players. Now, with the feds poking around, the sport treats these guys as outcasts. It is truly disgraceful, in my opinion.

Steroids don’t help hitters get a bat on a ball. Steroids don’t work like Popeye’s spinach either – they give athletes the energy to train longer and harder, but those same athletes must sacrifice their time to build additional strength. Somebody recently came to the brilliant deduction that a 500-foot home run counts the same in the record books as a 400-foot home run. This same person recorded the distance of every Barry Bonds home run since Bonds was alleged to be on steroids. He cross-checked those numbers with the dimensions of the ballparks in which those homers were hit. He factored in the likely impact of steroids and then reduced the distance of those home runs accordingly. He came to the conclusion that Bonds hit 75 home runs more than he would have hit without being juiced.

Take 75 home runs off Bonds’ career totals – hell, take 150 home runs away – and Bonds still has Hall of Fame numbers. Same with McGwire, Sosa, and other players. Yet, Major League Baseball, which more or less encouraged steroid use by turning the other way – after all, the sport was making gobs of money not long after the most recent strike compromised its popularity – now treats their benefactors as pariahs, thereby making it very difficult for these guys to get to the Hall of Fame. Again, truly disgraceful.